Weird Science

Who says there's no market for TV movies? Producer Ben Browning has just optioned Ursula K. Le Guin's Nine Lives—her 1969 novelette about the effect of human cloning on one's perception of the self—and Alice(aka James Tiptree Jr.) Sheldon's The Screwfly Solution—an epistolary 1977 novella about a misogynistic cult that advocates the killing of women to purify men—for Showtime's upcoming Masters of Sci-Fi series. Following the same format of the premium channel's Masters of Horror sequence, the series is planned as 13 hour-long mini-movies. Brandt & Hochman's Bill Contardi represented both works on behalf of the Virginia Kidd Agency's Vaughne Lee Hansen, who reps Le Guin. The agancy also represents Sheldon's estate for lit.

Saved by the Book

TV actress-turned-short film director and producer Tiffani (scratch the Amber) Thiessen, of Fastlane and Beverly Hills 90210 fame, is eager to join the ranks of Madonna, Billy Crystal and Jamie Lee Curtis in the celebrity children's book writer category. But the author of the manuscript Fins and Tales, co-written by R. Dean Johnson (Life. Be There at Ten 'Til), hopes to take her new career venture a step further than her fellow star-writers: her lit agent Jennifer DeChiara at the Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency is not only shopping the expected nine-part series—young-at-heart tales told from the perspective of Thiessen's two dogs, two cats and pet fish—as a children's book series but as an animated film as well—and has already gotten some nibbles from producers.

Lamora Locke-d Up

Perhaps already preparing for its next fantasy epic post-Potter, Warner Bros. has just nabbed the rights to Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora, coming from Spectra this June (see Hollywood Reader, Nov. 7, 2005) for producers Michael De Luca (Zathura) and Julie Yorn (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) in a "high-end" deal. Described as "a gritty fantasy crime thriller" replete with sorcery, skullduggery and abandoned towers of alien-forged glass, the proposed seven-book series details the adventures of the titular con artist/hero as he navigates a Venice-like city-state called Camorr. The project was flooded with offers before the holiday break, until the WB's Kevin McCormick staked his claim. Lynch is repped by The Firm's Alan Nevins.

e-mail:HollywoodReader@gmail.com